Quick Gameplay Thoughts: November 10

Morning folks,
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**Pre-Season Balance assessment so far**
So, pre-season's here. We've been poring over games, discussion, stats etc to build up an understanding of the state of the game, it's still really early days though with a lot of experimentation going on. Collection of things on our minds below, most of this is more of a watch list than an action list though.
Nothing's too crazy
* Some stuff's quite strong or quite weak, nothing that's been on fire enough to need day one attention though, which is a relief with a patch this big. Some bugs that will get hotfixed, or have already been so however and we’ll potentially do a bit of champion balance hotfixing today or Monday.
Strong Keystones
* Some keystones are performing quite well, with Aftershock, Guardian and Summon: Aery being ones we're watching particularly closely. Aftershock goes really well on some champs for example (those with pick/lockdown combos). Aery seems to outperform Comet on some champs who should be good Comet users, assumedly because of its higher reliability.
Unsealed Spellbook
* Unsealed Spellbook's showing a really wide range of outcomes, from looking pretty powerful to not contributing much depending on the player and champion in question. Makes sense given it probably got one of, or the highest, learning curves of a keystone, so wouldn't want to judge too quickly there, definitely one to watch though.
Non Keystone Runes
* Nothing to note here yet beyond that nothing seems crazy or useless so far.
Strong Champs
* Yorick's potentially too strong. That's more likely a result of Q affecting towers adding more power than expected, rather than anything Runes specific.
* Sona's looking really dominant with a range of different keystones. Not yet clear at time of writing if there's an issue with her, or just that she's taking better advantage than most of keystones that might be too strong.
Weak Champs
* Nunu and Ivern are both struggling quite a bit, assumedly in part due to a lack of obvious keystone they do well with as a default. Guardian seems to work fairly well on them, especially relative to the alternatives, but it's also stronger again on other Guardian users. Might need to buff them soon if they continue to struggle as much as they are.
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**Rune Path Popularity**
For anyone interested we're seeing some pretty strong trends in terms of what players are using so far. Precision/Domination and Domination/Precision are the clear favorites, though generally not the most effective on many champs. Lot of people seem to be avoiding Resolve/Inspiration as secondaries when they'd be great choices (e.g. tough lanes). That's not surprising though, we figured there'd be a lot of double damage tree use early on given that looks fun and with the ranked season over people aren't playing quite as competitively. Inspiration's the least popular primary path, which is also unsurprising given its got a lot of stuff that's not to everyone's taste and for some champs just doesn't work too well.
None of the primary/secondary pairings are looking too dominant power wise so far at least, it’s just popularity that’s varying a lot. If power does become a concern we’ll then use the stat bonuses particular pairings offer to bring them up or down in effectiveness as needed.
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**Skin Portrait Updates**
Patch 7.23's going to have tweaks to quite a few of the skin specific portraits on the in game HUD, zooming some of them out mainly that are too close to the face at present. Those are on PBE already, thoughts on how they now look appreciated.
http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/champion/Ziggs.png

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